Terry, let me take your points one by one.

First, you challenge me to send you "all" (your word) of my treasure hunting information. You will pay for photocopying and shipping. Well, you'll have to pay a handling fee as well. I have twenty-three years of research on various treasures (including the Beale Treasure). I have thousands of pages of documents, letters, newspaper clippings and photos. Thousands, Terry. Plus a small library of treasure and treasure related books. The shipping alone will cost several hundred dollars. Photocopying alone will cost at least a thousand dollars. Duplicating the photos will cost at least another thousand. And it will take me weeks (maybe months) to assemble and photocopy documents, and reprint the photos. I will have to charge $25 an hour for this service. Before I begin this rather daunting task, I will have to have some serious money up front. Please forward a certified (CERTIFIED, Terry) check for $2500 (you already have my address). Once I have your check, I'll begin. Before I send you my life's work in tresure hunting, I'll bill you for the balance (I estimate that the grand total will be at least $6,000). Please allow six to eight weeks for delivery. You'll be very pleased with your purchase, Terry--I'll even include the manuscript of my book on the Beale Treasure. And know this, Terry, I'm dead serious about this.

But I can't help wondering, Terry, why you would challenge me to send you all this stuff (and it's some really good stuff--modern day caches, and all that). I never asked you for all your treasure hunting material. I only asked for copies of the von Mueller letters. Perhaps you are trying to put me in a bad light, making it seem as though I was after your material while not being willing to share mine. [For others who will read this, a little background may help. Terry has already suggested that I send him all of my information for free, and then, if he liked it he would send me the information I requested. I was unable to take Terry up on his kind offer. But now that he is willing to pay up front, I'm game.]

No, Terry, I did not call you a "lair." Didn't call you a liar, either.

You state, Terry, that you "dont profess to know anything about the LUE. . . ." Yet in your April 2 post you make definite assertions about it. For example, you stated: "he [von Mueller] said he made up the word LUE and that he got it from using the first alphabet of each word that was crudley scribbled onto the original map, the three words were (Lloro, Urraca and Enterrari). . . ." You also state that von Mueller did not make the map--another definite assertion implying that not only do you know something about the LUE map, you also have inside information about it. I'm having difficulty in reconciling these assertions with your statement that you don't know anything about the LUE.

Further, Terry, you state: "I . . . dont know if Karl von Mueller made it up or not, I am not a physic [psychic?] and dont know if he is telling the truth or not, frankly I dont care, im not searching for it any way. . . ." This seems to contradict your earlier post. Help me out here, Terry. Do you know anything about the LUE treasure map or don't you? And if you don't, then why are you posting information about it?

Let me offer a little background for all who may read this. Under ordinary circumstances, I would never post anything remotely critical of anyone. Ecominer takes me to task for being critical of Terry, and I understand and appreciate his point of view. I had no intentions of making my concerns public. However, I did suspect that Terry was being less than genuine. So I emailed him asking for copies of the letters written by von Mueller. Had Terry simply declined, stating confidentiality as the reason, I would have dropped the matter right there. But Terry didn't stop there. He slipped me another "jewel," something he hadn't shared with the rest of you. In his return email, Terry wrote:

"I recieved [sic] a lot of information on the Beale treasure and the LUE, but I only have 2 letters by Karl Von Mueller, they only talk about the LUE. When I got them I promised I wouldn't give them out, so I wont. They dont say much any way, mostly what I said in my post, the only other thing it say's that I never put in my post was this, and I quote Talking about the LUE (if you get in close to it, put these letters on your back glass and you can go any where you want to (Z. E. P. A.) and not be stopped)."

So, Terry promised to keep this information confidential, never mind the fact that he's posting it on the Internet, and he adds, "put these letters on your back glass and you can go any where you want to (Z. E. P. A.) and not be stopped)." This is alledgedly coming from the great Karl von Mueller, mind you.

Z. E. P. A. indeed! Some people think they can say anything and get away with it. Now, I don't mind a little b.s.--all in good fun--and I don't mind someone speculating (even wildly) about a treasure theory, but I do mind when people offer babble thinking that others will mistake it for depth. Terry was having a little fun with me. Not a problem, really. But the point is, he was having a lot of fun with everyone on this forum, to its detriment.

After receiving this email from Terry, I felt I had to say something. So I wrote my post about the meaning of "lue" according to the Oxford English Dictionary. I did not wish to embarrass Terry or to engage in a public debate. Terry has chosen otherwise in his open letter to me. Terry, not I, has brought up this controversy.

By all means, this forum should be a place where we can all bring forth our wildest speculations, our most outlandish theories--it can even be a place to offer a little b.s. from time-to-time. In my judgement, however, Terry crossed the line.

Respectfully,

JW

• Re: The meaning of "LUE." (long post) Terry 07:33:54 4/08/99 (1)
  • Re: The meaning of "LUE." (long post) Chauncey Hood 11:50:16 4/09/99 (0)